The Baltimore City Office of Civil Rights and Wage Enforcement held its inaugural ‘Civil Rights week’ this past week. It began with a talk by Reverend Jesse Jackson and featured 9 events highlighting civil rights activities in the city. This unique week culminated with an award ceremony on Saturday night. It was great to see this office raise up the necessity of the work of civil rights activists and remind us of the work still needing to be done to assure justice for the oppressed. Roland Martin, the keynote speaker at the ceremony, again reminded us that we are the ones needing to do this work. While I enjoyed participating in the ceremony, as I left the Baltimore Convention Center in my ‘evening attire’ I couldn’t help but wonder if I was doing enough as I passed homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks of Charles Street.It doesn’t seem to matter what time I’m walking or driving down Charles street, or what block, there are homeless or unstably-housed people sleeping on the street. I counted 5 on the east side of Charles between Penn station and Eager the other night: one person per one side of a block. More south on Charles near Pratt there were 2-3 per block. This same phenomena of poverty is on Orleans street near Hopkins hospital, where people are begging all day and all night. Or North Avenue, Greenmount, St. Paul, or Guildford, or Aisquith or or or or. Over the past 10 years the number of people begging and sleeping in the streets have increased dramatically, especially the last 4 years and the color of poverty is changing. In parts of East and West Baltimore that have been populated by majority Black folks the past 50 or so years, the skin color of folks begging, squatting in abandoned housing, and sleeping on the streets have been changing. I remember when I first saw a White man begging on the corner of Orleans and Broadway. Or the first disheveled White person I saw walking down Madison and Monument street near the Northeast Market. Over time the number of White people living in Middle East Baltimore has increased. This is the effect of decreasing affordable housing, gentrification and displacement, the opioid crisis, insufficient wages to assure medical expenses and increasing housing prices do not lead to housing insecurity, violence in the home. [The percent of income used for housing has increased over the past years in certain neighborhoods even while the city-wide average shows a decrease from 53.2% to 49.8%).

When poor White people move into poor Black neighborhoods, we’re at an interesting intersection. While it would be lovely to think it’s because folks have dropped their white supremacy ideas and behavior, it’s something else that has driven White folks into Black neighborhoods. It’s poverty and some of the causes and consequences of poverty: any form of addiction, insufficient affordable housing secondary to gentrification, unfairly low wages, medical debt, and unemployment. And even though begging is an equal opportunity employer, I’ve wondered what happened to the man who lived at Douglass Homes, who use to beg at the corner of Orleans and Caroline every morning.  He’s been replaced. And this replacement economy has been happening across our city with White folks taking the place of Black folks on the corners. Poverty is an equal opportunity employer, even though we know that it often comes knocking at the door of Black and Brown people first.

The right to shelter, food, clothing and medicine is not equally distributed in our ‘charming’ city. Civil rights are afforded to some, not all. Some of our government leaders and the elite have much more and we need to do something about this inequity?  This is what our Office of Civil Rights and Wage Enforcement is bringing to our attention. I like to think that this means our city has finally decided there is too much poverty. That the city leaders have seen the growing number of homeless people sleeping on the street or poor people begging on the street and decided enough is enough. Now all we have to do is get the powerful elite, the wealthy capitalist investors, the high-paying executives in our philanthropic institutions, the presidents and CEOs of our hospitals and universities and all those profit-making ‘non-profit’ corporations who enjoy tax-exempt status-not paying into the upkeep of the infrastructure of our city- to join in this awakening.

But getting woke should be something we all do. Here’s what all of Baltimore getting woke would like to:

First we love ourselves, that’s an ongoing journey. Maybe find one thing that we can do for ourselves that continues to heal us. Healing creates more space in ourselves, and that space becomes available for others. We begin to notice others, all of the ‘other’.

During this process we remember that we’re connected to everyone else and that ultimately there is no separation: I’m like this because you’re like that and you’re like that because I’m like this. How does being me affect you being you?

Second we love the people. This love is not from a place of separation but from a realization that everyone is an extension of ourselves. The person sleeping on the sidewalk is me, not someone who could be me given other conditions. And this poverty of shelter is simply an extension of the poverty of love in our hearts-one could not exist without the other.  That’s why we can see homeless people and keep on moving. (That’s why we pause so we can begin to go deeper than the superficial thinking about the next tech gadget or the trending headline. Can we pause, breathe, get still and go this deep?)

Third we act from this place of clarity and insight. And we trust that coming from this place of radical love we can be the kind of change agent that sees the long continuum of time: the one that accounts for why there are so many homeless people on the street. Not because they are weak and failures but because they are part of a system cultivated by greed and aversion that continues to build power in the wealthy. We understand that helping the sister or brother on the street requires not only immediate support but ongoing action to change these systems. This change requires that historically marginalized people can access and benefit from a system of economic choices that benefits all equitably. This change requires that the powerful people in our city rethink how they accumulated their wealth and how they will re-distribute their wealth. This change requires that our city agencies hold themselves accountable to the people of our city; this includes not only city leaders but all those employed by the city. After all, we are paying their salaries.

So yes, there is so much possibility in waking up. The least of which is that we would actually see that civil rights is not for the few elite. Civil rights are for all of Baltimore, Maryland, and beyond. And we might pause the next time we see someone sleeping on the street or begging and wonder: how am I connected and what can I do?